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Please add those who were born, lived or died in Comal County, Texas.
Historical Timeline
- Early native American inhabitants include Tonkawa, Waco, Karankawa and Lipan Apache.
- 1700-1758 The area becomes known as “Comal”, Spanish for “flat dish”. Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Mission at Comal Springs.
- 1825 Coahuila y Tejas issues land grant for Comal Springs to Juan Martín de Veramendi.
- 1842 Adelsverein organized in Germany to promote emigration to Texas. Fisher-Miller Land Grant sets aside three million acres to settle 600 families and single men of German, Dutch, Swiss, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian ancestry in Texas.
- 1844, June 26 - Henry Francis Fisher sells interest in land grant to Adelsverein.
- 1845 Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels secures title to 1,265 acres of the Veramendi grant, including the Comal Springs and River, for the Adelsverein. Thousands of German immigrants are stranded at port of disembarkation Indianaola on Matagorda Bay. With no food or shelters, living in holes dug into the ground, an estimated 50% die from disease or starvation. The living begin to walk to their destinations hundreds of miles away. 200 German colonists who walked from Indianola found the town of New Braunfels at the crossing of the San Antonio-Nacogdches Road on the Guadalupe River. John O. Meusebach arrives in Galveston.
- 1846 March - Texas legislature forms Comal County from the Eighth Precinct of Bexar County. New Braunfels is the county seat.
- 1850 Survey of 130 German farms in Comal reveals no slave laborers.
- 1852 Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung begins publication, initially only in German, deriving its name from 16th-century Germany's prototype of a newspaper titled Zeitung.
- 1854 County is divided into eight public school districts. The Texas State Convention of Germans meet in San Antonio and adopt a political, social and religious platform, including: 1) Equal pay for equal work; 2) Direct election of the President of the United States; 3) Abolition of capital punishment; 4) “Slavery is an evil, the abolition of which is a requirement of democratic principles..”; 5) Free schools – including universities - supported by the state, without religious influence; and 6) Total separation of church and state.
- 1858 Final county boundaries determination with the separation of part of western Comal County to Blanco and Kendall counties. New Braunfels votes in a school tax.
- 1861 Comal County votes for secession from the Union. Contributes three all-German volunteer companies to the Confederate cause.
- 1887 Faust Street Bridge built over the Guadalupe River.
- 1898 Comal County limestone courthouse erected. Romanesque Revival style. Architect James Riely Gordon.
- 1920s County establishes itself as a manufacturing and shipping center for textiles, garments, flour, and construction materials.
- 1960 Four students at St. Mary's University San Antonio discover Natural Bridge Caverns, the largest known commercial caverns in the state of Texas.
- 1961 Comal's first Wurstfest draws a crowd of 2,000.
- 1964 Canyon Lake impoundment, boosting tourism and related industries.